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Sunday, May 20, 2012

With apologies to the folks responsible for the current Dos Equis advertising campaign: I don't always research minor league baseball, but when I do, I prefer the Pacific Coast League. (See my earlier posting titled The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, featuring an appearance by the PCL San Francisco Seals and Hollywood Stars).

In this second installment of my "There Used to Be a Ballpark Right Here" series, I'm taking a look at a San Francisco ballpark that was built nearly a century ago.

Every season from 1907 to 1930, the PCL San Francisco Seals played their home games at Recreation Park, located at 15th and Valencia. Every season, that is, except for one: 1914. That year, the Seals played at Ewing Field, a brand new park built by (and named after) club owner James Calvin Ewing.

Built for some $90,000 just eight years after the great San Francisco earthquake and conflagration of 1906, Ewing Field was billed as the city's first fire-proof ballpark. But it was fog, not fire, that doomed the park in 1914. Though the Seals finished the long PCL season with a record of 115 wins and 96 losses (their .545 winning percentage was third-best in the league), the constant presence of fog ultimately forced the club to abandon Ewing Field and hightail it back to Recreation Park. Thus ended the one-year "career" of Ewing Field as home of the Seals.

The park wasn't completely abandoned, however. For years, the site hosted numerous baseball and football games, as well as other special events. For example, back in late March of 1922, a two-day circus and athletic demonstration was staged at the park to benefit the San Francisco Community Service League. A number of wonderful photos of that particular event can be found at the Online Archive of California.

Here's one showing some sailors from the U.S. Navy sitting atop giant medicine balls, with the Ewing Field grandstand in the background:

Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

And who could forget the "royal feminine loveliness" (the San Francisco Chronicle's words, not mine) of Agnes Margaret Pape, the Queen of the Community Service Circus?

Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

But back when Ewing Field first opened, May 16, 1914, optimism for the new park was running high. Nearly all of the park's 18,000 seats were filled as local photographer W. Wesley Swadley captured a scene of Opening Day at Ewing Field in a gorgeous panoramic image available at the Library of Congress website:

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-126031

Located at what is now the southwest corner of Anza and Masonic, the ballpark sat some a half dozen blocks north of Golden Gate Park's panhandle. Today, all that is left of the park is its name, as the looping Ewing Road lies atop what used to be the ballpark's infield.

Taking a closer look at the panoramic image above, just two features can be seen outside the park: the cupola of a building and a water tower, both looming just beyond the left field wall. Here is a detail from Swadley's photo:

And here's an even closer look, zooming in on the cupola:

(By the way, check out the young men operating the scoreboard. One is resting against a box that contains various number placards, waiting to be posted on the board.)

While the water tower looks somewhat generic, the cupola appears quite distinctive. A different view showing the cupola is found in a detail from another photo at the Online Archive of California. As in the panoramic image, we are essentially looking south from the ballpark toward the building with the cupola:

Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

But atop what building did this cupola rest? After some digging, I found the answer in an article about the ballpark's ultimate demise. The story was covered in numerous papers. This article is from the Nevada State Journal of Sunday, June 6, 1926:

SAN FRANCISCO, June 5.—(AP)—Fire, believed to have been caused by a lighted match being dropped in the wooden grandstand at Ewing Field in the Richmond district, today started a conflagration which terrorized a neighborhood, destroyed many homes, did property damage estimated at $207,500, defied the entire fire department and forced volunteers into service when a $100,000 fire in the Mission district started at the same time.

Carried by a stiff trade wind over Calvary cemetery down to Broderick street, a distance of five blocks, embers from the Ewing Field blazes furnished thousands of torches that fell on wooden roofs and started numerous small blazes.

A number of wooden homes surrounding the field went up like so much tinder and householders, caught unnwares by the quick spread of the blaze, escaped without hats or coats in most instances.

The water mains in the vicinity of the Ewing Field fire were unable to furnish sufficient water to meet the demands of the firefighters and the auxiliary salt water system, built for fires of major proportion in the downtown urea, was out of reach.

Banners of smoke from the blazing field were visible throughout the city and attracted throngs ofspectators. Directly above the fire zone rose Lone Mountain with its cross, and thousands of men and women watched the fire from its sides and summit.

The nuns at Presentation Convent, operated by the Sisters of the Presentation, at Masonic Avenue and Turk street, only half a block removed from Ewing Field, prevented a panic by their cool-headed work. When it appeared that the convent structure was doomed, the nuns collected their movable valuables and were prepared to depart at an instant's notice.

The cupola on the convent matches that seen outside Ewing Field quite well.

Though the convent was threatened by the Ewing Field fire, it was apparently spared, as the same building (sans cupola) still stands today at the northwest corner of Masonic and Turk. Here's an aerial image taken from the east from Google Maps:

And here's the view from the north, showing the side that faced the ballpark.

Another view of the one-time convent, this time from the ground and also looking from the north, is available in Google Street View:

The moral of this story? Well, back in 1914, if you were a member of the Sisters of the Presentation and were crazy for Seals baseball, you could simply climb to the top of the convent cupola and peak out for a free view into Ewing Field.

From a baseball standpoint, I suppose this would make you nun the wiser.